death fits snug like a glove, they’d said to me before i left. equally frustrated. shackled to the wall with a chain of dove wings. blissful surrender to the 50 watt bulb hanging down in the center of the room. twilight. sounds welling up from beneath my feet. arrows shot through internal organs of saints and martyrs. lifted beyond the veils of understanding and washing ourselves in the sandpits of mars. slowly piling up the bodies of scarabs around us. sand dollars. cloud cover. unusually large roses with little green arms in place of thorns. digging themselves into us, grabbing with tiny prickly fingers. she was a semite. she had no other god before me. she shoved him aside and ignited the ground underneath where they’d both been standing. sparks shot up. she caught they in her eyelashes, where they danced and waited patiently. blinking twice in rapid succession. visuals of quiet women standing solemnly by the edge of a pool. columns rose up behind them. they shared some silent bond. a genetic thread which arced around them all in the air. underground, where things were heavier. where rocks and mice and phantasms roamed and beat each other up. where bills never piled up. slips of paper demanding our attention to detail. but i was a spike driven into your brain. a shelf where we kept the good liquor out of the reach of the children. weathermen came and went in the courtyard. each predicting some great and terrible storm. each more devasting and explosive than the last. terrible wild ass horny wind spilled down on us. mental retardation overtook us. cardboard boxes were piled up all around us in a circle. we were inundated with medical files and legal transcriptions and things which would take some time indeed to sort through. jocular. jugular. the jugglers with their three small knives twirling the points absently on the ends of their fingers. prints sliced off and fed to the cats. they would be the ones to show us the way. with their no-faces and licked off adam’s apples. shown through with a light in their throats. somewhere formed into a series of deep painful welts on their backs. a grove of shivering question marks caught in the rain.